


The stars that have the most glory have no rest

by Princex_N



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Bullying, Conversations, Diary/Journal, First Meetings, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Hopeful Ending, IPRE, Light Angst, Loneliness, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-19 23:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10650636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: "Make sure you don't let those books keep you from living, dear," her mother says, and Lucretia always promises. She fills books upon books with her ever-improving handwriting and never wants to be short on experiences to write about.Or, a look at Lucretia's life and records over the years.





	The stars that have the most glory have no rest

**Author's Note:**

> Lucretia is gentle and I love her. My Moon Wife.

Lucretia does not have the best track record with people. 

Her interest in recording things has been prominent since her childhood. Once she learns to write, she keeps going and doesn't stop. She simply  _likes_ writing things down, collecting them and keeping them safe so that anyone could go back and relive these experiences whenever they want to. She enjoys having that option, and making that option available to other people. 

"Make sure you don't let those books keep you from living, dear," her mother says, and Lucretia always promises. After all, if she never did anything but write, then what would she have to write about? She fills books upon books with her ever-improving handwriting and never wants to be short on experiences to write about. 

No, Lucretia's writing never gets in the way of her living her life. 

Other people are the ones who do that. 

Lucretia learns early on that her writing makes her 'weird', and other people don't like people who are 'weird'. They'll be interested in her work for a while, but quickly they get tired of interest and it will devolve into 'dislike'. She doesn't talk enough, or she talks too much, but about the wrong things, she writes too much, and it's 'weird' and it's 'creepy' that she writes so much about other people.

 "How come you're always writing?" A girl in her class asks. 

Lucretia looks up and says, "Because I like to." She documents the words as she says them, and later highlights it, so that she'll be able to find them again later. 

But even though  _she_ likes it, the other kids don't. It becomes a game to try to interrupt her work as much as possible. People bump into her as they pass, or even yank at her hands or book, to mess up her writing and make her leave nasty drag lines from her pen through her words. They knock her journal out of her hands or even steal it from her grasp and run off with it. Her journal is torn and scribbled in and dusty with the dirt that it's been thrown into. 

She starts to keep a second notebook at home, so that she can have a clean copy of her records that she doesn't have to worry about getting ruined. 

It goes on for weeks, months, years. By the time she gets to high school, she's not sure if it's worth it anymore. She liked writing; it was a purpose, and she likes to have a consistent collection of events, even if she doesn't always look back through them, it's nice to know that they exist, a reminder for when she's gone.

But she doesn't have any friends, she's lonely, and doesn't that count as letting the books keep her from living her life? Even if it's not really her fault?

She kind of thinks so. 

So, when Lucretia goes back to school, she doesn't take her journal with her. 

It does not work like she had hoped. 

She's still clumsy when she talks to people, and the people who did not know her before don't seem to like her company while those from her old school now taunt her for her lack of journal, rather than her possession of one.

She still writes, from memory once she's at home, but it isn't satisfactory. More than once she finds herself scrawling down her own notes in the margin of her school notes without even realizing what she'd been doing. Her hands feel strange and empty without anything to occupy them, and she doesn't appreciate the sensation. 

She begins focusing her attention on other collections to try to fill the odd void left behind. She goes on walks and brings back pretty little rocks or trinkets that catch her eye. She begins to carry a sketchbook to capture the likeness of skylines or plants or people that she comes across. She attempts to meet people through these newer hobbies, but doesn't have much luck. 

She does not make any friends, she does not suddenly bloom socially, her life does not become any more fulfilling (In fact, she'd even say it's worse than before; she feels listless and purposeless, even with her new hobbies, and she hates it)

So, she brings the journal back, and can't deny the thrill of excitement that shoots through her chest as she selects a new notebook (so that her original copy will be safe, in case anything starts happening to this one). 

She returns to her writing, and the stares come back and the taunting returns (though it had never really stopped), but Lucretia feels comfortable in her skin again and that's all that really matters to her. 

"Why are you always writing in there?" a classmate asks her one morning. 

She doesn't look up as she replies, "Because I need to," and records her own response in her spindly neat handwriting, and later highlights this note as well. 

College is not as hard and not as easy as school had been in the past. The other students appreciate her note-taking in a way that no one else has cared to before. 

"They're so neat, and you get them down verbatim," one girl tells her, "I don't get why you write down all that other stuff for, but your class notes are impeccable, and that's what counts, right?" 

Lucretia supposes that it's true, an at least it means that she's talking to more people now? Even if she feels a bit like she's being used, at least it's something. It's harder for her to meet people now and she feels more isolated than ever, so she has to get her outside contact from somewhere. She supposes that it counts for _something_ , and at least her notes are being appreciated instead of destroyed. 

That's how she meets Davenport. 

Lucretia is a freshly graduated and working on a manual while also taking notes on a lecture she's sitting in on, when a nasal too-loud voice exclaims, "That's amazing!" and startles her hands still. 

She glances over and meets the wide eyes of the gnome sitting next to her, and his eyes are practically shining with excitement as he introduces himself as the head of the Inter-planar Research Team about to leave for its long-term research voyage and would she like a job? 

"I'd been planning on keeping the records myself," he explains as she still tries to process what's happening despite the fact that she's been writing down his every word with earnest, "but this is incredible. I'm, sorry, your name wouldn't happen to be Lucretia, would it?" 

"Yes. It is. Sorry, have we met?" 

They haven't. Lucretia would have records of him if they had, but people prefer to be asked instead of told. 

"Oh no," he assures her unnecessarily, "I believe we went to the same college. People called you The Journal Keeper. I don't suppose you'd want to continue living up to that nickname?" 

Lucretia can't help but feel a bit of pride well up in her chest at the moniker, but can't make a decision like this in the spur of the moment. "Could I get back to you?" she asks, and tries not to wince or feel like she's asking for too much. 

"No problem! Let me give you my number, we can meet up at a better time and discuss things more in-depth." He rattles off his contact information and Lucretia writes it down perfectly in slightly trembling lettering, and goes on her way. 

She doesn't know much about inter-planar research, but knows enough to know that she wouldn't  _hate_ the work that she'd be documenting, and the more she researches the more excited she becomes at what it would  _mean_. 

She would be documenting and collecting things that no one else has ever even  _seen_ before. 

_"Don't let those books keep you from living, dear_ ," but here they've opened an extraordinary opportunity that there's no way she'd have access to otherwise. 

She goes back through her old shelves and pulls out two books - one from elementary school, one from high school - and flips through them to the appropriate highlighted sections. 

"Because I like to," written in her sloppy too big childish scrawl. 

"Because I need to," written in her tiny anxious tense handwriting. 

She wants her writing to be  _fun_ again, and not just a constant idle action. 

Lucretia is a recently graduated technical writer with no inter-planar background to speak of, but she's already decided without a shadow of doubt that she'll definitely be accepting this offer. 

She contacts Davenport again; he is just as enthusiastic to accept her as part of the team as he had been the night before. She's coming on a little later than some of the others, but the team is still new enough that it doesn't quite matter. It will be her job to keep notes of the research and events of the expedition. Everyone else will be writing their own specialized reports, but she is assured that her more general ones will be no less important. 

"Besides," Davenport adds, "You probably have the best work ethic out of all of them." 

She is only a little bit intimidated by them. 

Lup and Taako are bright vivacious characters that almost remind Lucretia of her early classmates, with a biting snark and too many sharp edges between them. 

"Are you  _always_ writing in there?" Taako asks, because someone must always ask, apparently. 

"Yes," Lucretia replies, and is already bracing herself for the usual song and dance. 

"Hell yea!" Lup exclaims, throwing her arm around her brother's shoulders and flashing a wide grin. "Finally someone else is around to write about how fucking  _incredible_ we are." 

Lucretia smiles back, equal parts amused and relieved, and doesn't notice the hot flush that spreads under Lup's brown skin in response. 

Magnus makes for quite the intimidating figure, for all of the two seconds he spends looming over her before he's distracted by the task of chasing down a passing couple in order to gain permission to pet their dog. 

Merle introduces himself with the worst pick-up line Lucretia has ever heard in her life, and without thinking she replies with, "Would you like me to cross that out so that you can do better?" and sends the twins into howling peals of laughter. She immediately feels bad, but Merle joins in on the laughter soon after. 

"Alright," he says, "so it wasn't my best. Cut me some slack." 

She doesn't know how well they'll all actually get along in the long term, but it's one of the best first impressions she's ever had and so she'll count it as a tentative win. 

She's not  _really_ expecting much of anything. Lucretia has never been good at making friends, and they are all bright personalities that seem like they'd get along better with each other than they would with her, but at least it won't be intolerable to listen to them talk among themselves. 

The final preparations for the trip go by faster than Lucretia would have thought. She leaves her old journals in her home along with most of her collections - there isn't a surplus of space on the ship and she doesn't doubt that she'll begin filling up new collections in no time at all. 

“Can you tell us a little about the one lady who hasn’t said _shit_ yet so far, and what purpose she serves?” a reporter at the press conference asks, and Lucretia is halfway through writing the question before she realizes that they’re talking about _her_ and she’s swamped with embarrassment. She had hoped that no one would pay her any attention.

“Well, um, hi, my name is Lucretia, I’ll be the chronicler on this journey, which means I’m going to write down everything that happens, uh, up there.”

The disbelief and thoroughly unimpressed, “That’s it?” doesn’t particularly surprise her.

She shrugs. “I’m uh, I’m a biographer by trade,” she says, which is like a fancy way of saying that you’ve been writing your whole life, only now you’re getting paid for it. “And this,” she gestures to the group of people behind her and feels that burst of excitement in her chest again, “this seems like a story worth telling _well_.”

She goes to sit back down, feeling a little awkward, and Lup leans in to whisper, "That was _super_ hot," before going up to the mic to answer her own question. 

Lucretia writes it down for the sake of accuracy, but writes it slightly sloppier than the surrounding words in the hopes of making them slightly more difficult to read. For other people, at least. 

And bars aren't really Lucretia's scene any more than press conferences are, but she's glad that she was invited to go along, and glad that she went, because there is a shit ton of things happening for such a small group of people.

Magnus almost immediately gets into a fight. Taako and Lup beat a group of men at pool and take their  _shoes_ , of all things, as their winnings. Davenport parks himself at the bar and drinks as if he's just now realized what the reality of traveling with this team will look like. Lucretia herself somehow winds up behind the bar, and out of the way of yet another fight that's breaking out in the cramped quarters. 

She's a bit distracted by trying to make sure that she gets everything down as accurately as possible, but that doesn't mean that she misses the fact that Merle had gotten her out of the way of a fight that might have possibly been her fault. 

It definitely isn't the first time she's caught a bad sort of attention for her habit, but it  _is_ the first time that anyone has ever come to her aide, and Lucretia has no intention of letting that go overlooked. 

There's a lot going on and everyone is busy, but she scrawls down a note to herself to thank him once things have settled. 

He shrugs it off like it’s not a big deal, and it probably isn’t for him, but it’s not something she’s planning on forgetting any time soon.

Maybe if she'd had that same sort of attention to detail the next day, then things wouldn't have gone as bad as they did. 

She is the record keeper and it is her _job_ to notice things like this, but she hadn’t and everything had gone horribly wrong very badly.

She had been writing things down, but her focus had been on the robes she was wearing; soft and red with the embroidered IPRE on the front, and it keeps catching her attention because it is a symbol, a physical representation that says that for the first time in her life she is a _part_ of something, and not just someone sitting alone on the outside. For once, she _belongs_ , even if it’s not a significant position.

That’s part of the reason why it takes her so long, too long, to notice.

She can’t afford to miss anything else; her hands are shaking as she records Davenport’s message but she gets it all down word for word and tries not to think about how it’s possible that no one else besides them will ever get that message anyway.

The landing on the new planet is rough and unsteady. What should have been a moment of extraordinary discovery is tainted by the thick shadows hanging over their heads.

They try to leave, but they can’t, meaning that their only option is to stay. There’s a heavy weight of unease that permeates the air, but the others fall into an almost lighthearted curious excitement fairly quickly, and Lucretia finds herself pulled along in it.

She doesn’t know what happened to her home, but this world is new and unexplored, and one can only ruminate on the what-if’s and dread for so long before it becomes intolerable.

She starts with the rocks. She’s not a geologist, but she can appreciate the way they look the way she has since she was a high-schooler. Barry helps to fill in the more factual information for her, and she keeps most of the rocks in the cases that she’d brought, but she keeps her favorites lined up on her desk.

She moves to plants next. She doesn’t have the time to care for living plants, so instead she draws detailed diagrams and keeps careful notes. On the nights where she doesn’t have other work, she uses her free time to make more artistic copies of her favorites.

The others take notice of her collections fairly quickly, which makes sense considering that they all live in extremely close quarters. 

"Do you need these for something special?" Lup asks, rolling a rock from Lucretia's desk between her fingers. 

Lucretia fights back the urge to snatch it back before the other woman can do anything to them, she doesn't think that Lup actually would, but old habits die hard. "No," she replies, "I just like them." 

Lup makes a little noise of acknowledgement, and puts the rock back in its own place and leaves. Lucretia wonders briefly if she’s going to have to start hiding them, just in case.

She’s not expecting the gifts.

Lup starts bringing back pockets full of rock and flowers and offers them up to Lucretia as the team eats dinner together. Lucretia starts to think that perhaps she’s being made fun of, but dismisses the thought when she sees how Lup is practically oozing with a rare desire to please.

So, Lucretia takes them, sorts them, and puts her favorites on display, and doesn't miss the self-satisfied grin on Lup's face whenever she sees one of her gifts on Lucretia's desk. 

Taako, never one to be outshone by his sister, joins in next. He brings back rock and little bones that he finds, and is much more casual about it than Lup. Lucretia would almost believe that his only interest is in beating his sister, if she didn’t see past his taunting laughter and subsequent arguments, to the way he shuffles Lucretia’s desk around so that his gifts are at the forefront where everyone can see them.

Magnus, who Lucretia has actually managed to hold some stumbling conversations with, starts to bring things back as well. His are little models of the locals carved from a variety of different woods.

“Picked it up because I was bored,” he explains to her, speaking loudly to be heard over the twin’s outraged voices and Merle’s attempts to calm them down, “But it turned into something I really enjoyed.”

Lucretia, who has mostly left the studies of the animals up to Barry and the twins, appreciates the opportunity to scrutinize and feel without having to worry about being rude. Magnus’ work is extraordinarily accurate, and she makes sure to praise him on it every time he brings her something new.

As the twins get more elaborate, the others decide to join in as well. It becomes a competition to see who will bring in the best things for Lucretia’s collection, a game that Lucretia would quickly be overwhelmed by, if they weren’t careful about it. The pressure of selecting a winner is kept largely off of her shoulders, and their mock arguments and complaints are aimed at the participants as competition and off of her as a judge, so Lucretia enjoys the little gifts and the exaggerated drama they bring and quietly marvels to herself at the ease of it all.

She keeps records of these games and conversations out of the official documents, and inside her own personal journals instead. She doesn't want to lose a single moment of these experiences, because they are so new and precious and  _hers_. It would be remiss of her if she somehow forgot a single one of them. 

(Much,  _much_ later, it will be these journals that she keeps the closest. She has lost all of her teammates, she cannot afford to lose a single moment of what she has left of them)

Her collection grows extraordinarily fast, and she begins cycling items in and out of the display to make sure that no one’s object becomes more special than the other’s. Absurdly, she starts feeling vaguely like a mother, trying to make sure to avoid picking favorites and making one person feel somehow less appreciated than the others.

She doesn’t know what happened to her family, but this new one that is forming within the walls of the Starblaster is enough that the loss doesn’t hurt quite as much.

“Do you ever miss it?” Barry asks one night.

They’d started having movie nights a few months into this stay, and had maintained the tradition despite their lack of variety in entertainment films. Taako and Magnus have somehow managed to cram themselves onto one of the couches, and Taako’s long ears twitch every time Magnus snores. Merle and Davenport are propped more against each other than against the sofa that they’re leaned against. Barry is sitting next to Lucretia, with Lup’s legs sprawled in his lap while her head rests in Lucretia’s.

“Miss what?” she asks as she combs her cramping fingers carefully through Lup’s hair, eliciting an appreciative hum from the sleeping elf.

“Home,” he says, then sighs heavily. “This expedition is everything I wanted and more than I could have imagined, but…”

“But it’s hard not to miss it,” Lucretia finishes, and he nods, looking exhausted.

Lucretia tries to think of something to say, and tries not to squirm because she is bad at conversations and even worse at comforting people.

Eventually she says, “I know I’m the journal keeper, but that doesn’t mean you can’t keep your own, for before.”

“Does it help?”

“It’s why I started,” she admits, “and I never stopped.”

“Must help with _something_ then,” Barry snorts, perhaps sarcastically, but he takes the empty notebook that she offers to him with grateful hands.

If Barry’s conversation was unexpected, then Taako’s is plain shocking.

The two of them talk and get along well, but she’s still surprised when he saunters his way into her tiny office one morning. He isn’t usually one to actively seek out the company of others.

“Barry and Lup left without me,” he tells her in lieu of explaining, but she supposes that's an explanation in itself. 

Taako is not dependent on his sister, or lacking without her. He is a complete individual, still unsettled by being alone on this world where each other is all that’s left of home.

“Alright,” Lucretia says mildly, and doesn’t push or inquire or initiate conversation, and the two of them work separately in silence until Taako gets bored and begins voicing his numerous complaints.

So, Lucretia pulls out her now ridiculously large collection and the two of them sort and separate and discard the duplicates until the others return home from their own work. 

Taako never mentions it, but he keeps on visiting, and Lucretia hopes that he enjoys her company as much as she enjoys his. 

And perhaps she should have known that these good times wouldn’t be able to last.

After all, they very rarely do.

It’s not exactly a routine sort of trip, but it wasn’t supposed to end with the destruction of yet another world.

Their escape is crazy and chaotic, and Lucretia doesn't write any of it down in the moment because she has to focus all of her attention on making sure that she actually makes it back safely, but that doesn't mean that she overlooks or forgets what happened. She's not sure that she ever could. 

Magnus is dead. He does not make it back to the ship, and they leave without him, Lucretia is certain of this. 

So she cannot explain why he is on the ship, looking shocked, but relatively unharmed. 

Taako is the first to break the tense and uncertain silence, with a peal of high pitched laughter and an incredulous, “What?!”

The others quickly devolve into arguments about what just happened and what it means. Most of it is scientific jargon that goes largely over Lucretia’s head, though for once her attention is not focused on writing down what they’re saying. Instead, she is flipping frantically through her journal, making sure that it is all intact, and is relieved to see that it is.

And then the relief is gone and in its place is a thick and strangling anxiety and suddenly it’s like she cannot breathe.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Lup asks, breaking out of a heated debate to approach Lucretia’s trembling form with something like concern in her eyes.

“This is all that’s left!” Lucretia explains, slightly hysterically. “Whatever that thing was, that world is gone and this ship holds the only proof that it ever existed!”

Her collections, her records, their notes, their research, that’s it. An entire world existing only in a few bound books and containers.

It’s horrifying to consider.

“Lucretia,” Davenport says, pushing gently on her shoulders until she looks up at him, her slightly wild eyes meeting his steady ones. “We don’t know what this thing is, but we’re going to find out, and I can’t imagine someone better suited to preserving these worlds than you.”

It’s an incredible amount of pressure, and she almost crumbles beneath it. Keeping notes on an expedition is much different from being tasked with being the sole retainer of an entire world and its people.

She glances up at the others, taking in their disheveled and shell shocked appearances, all of them watching her with varying degree of concern, and supposes that if this is how things are going to work, then she couldn’t be working with a better group of people.

She takes a deep breath, and she nods. She had wanted to have fun writing again, she had wanted a lot from this expedition, and things haven’t quite gone the way that she’d thought they would have.

But she was right about one thing; these are stories worth telling, and they deserve to be told _well_.

So, it’s a good thing that Lucretia has always been good at rising to a challenge, and that she doesn’t have to deal with it on her won.

She has her team to back her up.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really very excited to see where this arc is headed and what kind of bullshit shenanigans these kids got up to in their travels. I'm pumped as hell.  
> [my twitter](http://www.twitter.com/princex_n) and [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


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